The Hubble and James Webb space telescopes have captured matching views of a gas cloud nicknamed the Cat’s Head Nebula, a dusty pillar about 7,500 light-years from Earth inside the larger Carina Nebula. The European Space Agency released three views of the same structure, each taken in a different kind of light, ahead of Halloween.
The shape earns its name from its outline: a tall column of gas and dust with a lump at the top that looks like a cat seen from behind, head turned to one side. A bright red spot in Hubble’s visible-light image marks what astronomers believe is a young star still partly buried in dust.
Hubble’s optical view shows the pillar as a dark, opaque column with a glowing rim where ultraviolet light from nearby massive stars heats the gas. Webb’s near-infrared view cuts through thinner dust to reveal the column’s dense interior, plus background stars and distant galaxies that visible light cannot reach.
Webb’s mid-infrared image turns the scene ghostly blue-grey, tracing warm dust and carbon-based molecules excited by starlight. In that view the cat’s eye glows yellow, and a small orange point appears to one side whose connection to the nebula remains unresolved, according to ESA.
The pillar is temporary. Radiation and stellar winds from nearby massive stars are slowly eroding it, and ESA says the structure will eventually break apart as new stars emerge from the cloud that formed them.
Source: Knowridge
